55 MC/18/20 LOCALISM ACT 2011 - APPOINTMENT OF INDEPENDENT PERSONS PDF 203 KB
Monitoring Officer
Additional documents:
Minutes:
55.1 On the proposal of Councillor Gowrley and seconded by Councillor Flatman
By unanimous vote
It was Resolved:-
That the four individuals included in Appendix A of the report be appointed as the Council’s Independent Persons pursuant to section 28(7) of the Localism Act 2011 for a term of two years with an option to extend the appointment for a further two years.
54 BC/18/21 LOCALISM ACT 2011 - APPOINTMENT OF INDEPENDENT PERSONS PDF 204 KB
Monitoring Officer
Additional documents:
Minutes:
54.1 The Monitoring Officer introduced the report and informed Council that it was required by the Localism Act to appoint at least one independent person to be consulted on for Code of Conduct complaints. The Council had an arrangement with Ipswich Borough Council, Mid Suffolk District Council and Suffolk County Council to jointly appoint these independent persons. That arrangement had worked very well as it provided a pool of people which provided resilience and it also allowed for if an Independent Person had a conflict they could choose not to deal with that complaint because there were other people in the pool. The Monitoring Officer recommended that the Council appoint 3 people as contained in appendix A of the report.
54.2 Councillor Ward MOVED the recommendations which Councillor Ridley seconded.
54.3 Councillors raised concerns relating to whether one of the candidates would be conflicted because of their current occupation.
54.4 In response the Monitoring Officer informed Council that as part of the recruitment process any potential independent person who would have a conflict of interest that prevented them undertaking this role were filtered. The act itself required all of the Independent Persons to declare any interests that they may have when they were approached to deal with any particular case. All of these people have some link to the locality. They live within Suffolk and it may be that at times they have been involved in some previous correspondence or some previous activity and in that case, they have an obligation to declare an interest and not be involved in that complaint. Also all independent person’s have a thorough training session. So all those points would be covered in the training and particularly as was rightly alluded to the kind of new area of social media and all that goes with it.
It was Resolved: -
That the three individuals included in Appendix A of the report be appointed as the Council’s Independent Persons pursuant to section 28 (7) of the Localism Act 2011 for a term of two years with an option to extend the appointment for a further two years.